Writing About Nature: Witness to Geese

One evening this week I stood on a viewing platform at the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge in California’s Great Central Valley. To the east the moon, two days from full, silvered the ponds of the refuge. Westward, sunset light on the water was greenish gold and the sky a blaze of fiery red. I was there to view the fly-out, a nightly spectacle during the winter months when hundreds of thousands of geese move from the ponds to the fields to forage. A clatter of wings, flashes of white as nearby snow geese lifted. All around me was the sound of their calling. Everywhere I looked, huge skeins of geese scribbled ragged black lines on the red sky. 

 As writers who care about nature, we have many ways to share such an experience. We could do a straight science story about bird migration and the importance of the Pacific Flyway. The story might be part of a social history: the loss of wetlands since European settlement and the struggles to balance the needs of agriculture and the needs of waterfowl. We could use the scene as part of a fiction, to establish location or show an aspect of character. Maybe it becomes a poem. There might even be a political aspect in the fact that the first ditches for the refuge were dug in 1937 by the Civilian Conservation Corps, a work relief program that was part of FDR's New Deal legislation.

 Whatever the genre of our writing, our job is to bear witness. Our readers must be there with us, feeling the wonder of that sky full of birds, feeling with us the humbling majesty of the natural world.

       Maureen Eppstein

Comments

[Doug Fortier]

I appreciated your lovely observations of the geese flying in the valley as well as the comments on the social/political aspects of this event. it reminded of one of my favorite novels, The Echo Maker by Richard Powers where he writes of the cranes of Nebraska. The cranes in Lodi are worth visiting if you haven't been there.

[Maureen Eppstein]

Thanks, Gaile. I recently finished Richard Powers's "The Echo Maker." It's an excellent example, I think, of using nature writing in fiction. For me, the sand hill cranes became characters in Powers's story.

We did see a few sands hill cranes on our trip. One day I want to see them dance.

[Gaile Wakeman]

Well, Maureen,I completely missed the above reply to my comment and it was written soon after mine. Guess I need to get used to this newfangled way of connecting and do better. I do hope you contribute more nature writing when you have time. I also considered the sand cranes as characters in the book and enjoyed the The Echo Maker very much. The Lannan Foundation in Santa Fe had him as a featured speaker and I have the podcast of it. Maybe he would present at the conference someday!

[newport driving school]

I guess I'm the only one who hadn't heard of this before!